Avodah Mailing List

Volume 14 : Number 032

Tuesday, November 23 2004

• Re: Torah and Science
• Re: Torah and science
• Re: Science and Torah
• Josephus and the esrog
• RE: Torah and science (do scientists believe in the Creator)
• Re: Orthodox Conservative Rabbi
• Re: Torah and science
• Re: Asking questions
• Re: Torah and science
• Re: Orthodox rabbis, Conservative shuls
• Re: Orthodox Conservative Rabbi
• Re: Orthodox rabbis, Conservative shuls
• locusts
• Re: Torah and science
• Re: Sanhedrin
• Re: Asking questions
• Re: Va'avorcho mevorchecho
• Re: Asking questions
• Re: Orthodox rabbis, Conservative shuls
• Re: locusts
• Re: Asking questions
• Knowing and Believing

Interesting summing-up of how to establish truth, at least with a small  
type t...:
<http://www.sophists.org/news.html>

An aside: Is it an American thing that the author, who seems to be
addressing a general public, uses the word "maven"?

ELPh Minden

R' Yitzchok Zlochower wrote <<< I have greater difficulties, however,
with the idea proclaimed by Zvi and others that Hashem created an old
appearing world replete with fossils of creatures and plants that never
lived... Are we to believe that there is divine delight taken in fooling
us or in some odd sense of divine aesthetics? I don't know if I would
place my trust in such a being. >>>

I mean this in all seriousness, and not cynically or rhetorically: Do
you have any difficulties with the idea that Adam and Chava viewed a
world which fooled them regarding the age of the animals and plants -
or their very own bodies, for that mttter?

Akiva Miller

rzl
>If you have been following the discussion in Avodah, you must know that
>this idea is held by Rambam and others very strongly, and was used to
>debunk the "obvious fact" that the world is eternal--even though it
>certainly looks/looked that way. And you must be aware of the approach
>that Hashem created the world in a mature state, just as he did Adam. Or
>that the processes of Creation produced results which in post-Creation
>"Nature" indicate events and lengths of time different from what actually
>occurred

While I am aware that some hold this idea, I don't think it is the rambam
- and would like evidence to the contrary. Nor am I aware of any other
major rishon who would hold explicitly that the world was created in such
a fashion that applying our reason would lead to wrong conclusions in
any area - and would like explicit citations. This is not moreh nevuchim
101 - not even 401 - and I think is actually against the more nevuchim -
even if it today quite common. It isn't that the rambam thinks that the
purpose of the rocks is to tell us the age - but that we can rely on
any deduction our reason reaches from them..

Meir Shinnar

(Dr. Louis, as mentioned in another post, is a professor of classics and
literature at Yeshiva University, and the author of 164 articles and 11
books (last count), concerning Josephus and Hellenistic Judaism.)

I started by asking where this "persea" was mentioned in Josephus,
as I couldn't find it.

Dr. Louis Feldman: 
> The citation for persea in Josephus, Antiquities 3.245 is 3:10.4 in 
> Whiston's translation. This is the only occurrence of persea in 
> Josephus. 

Zvi Lampel: 
My 1998 edition, Thomas Nelson Publishers, reads "pomecitron." Comments?

DLF: 
There is no doubt that Josephus, writing in Greek, used the word
persea. This is a good Greek word, found, for example in Theophrastus,
an authority on botany, who lived in the fourth and third century
B.C.E., in Diodorus,(first century B.C.E.) Strabo (first century B.C.E.
and first century C.E.), and Plutarch (first and second century C.E.),
among others. The person who translated this as pomecitron either did
not know the meaning of the word persea or knew the fact that Josephus
elsewhere (13.372) mentioned it as a citron and was troubled by the
apparent contradiction or knew that Jews on Sukkot take not a persea
but a citron and hence took the liberty to translate as pomecitron.

ZL: 
Is it possible that there are variant Greek versions of Josephus? I
suggest this not only because Josephus must have been well aware of what
an esrog is, but because of another issue that has come up in the Avodah
discussion group...

DLF: 
...As to the persea in Ant.3.245 and kitriois and kitrion in Ant.
13.372 there are no alternate readings in the Greek text, but for Ant.
13.372 the Latin translation of Josephus, done in the sixth century by
the school of Cassiodorus, for kitriois has virgis cedrinis, which means
" twigs of cedar," apparently an error.

In general, the manuscript tradition of Josephus is not good. 
Greek was not his first (Aramaic) or even his second language (Hebrew).
He himself (Against Apion 1.50) says that he had "co-workers" who helped
him to translate the Bellum from the original language, presumably
Aramaic, into Greek.

[End of exchange.] 

So I think we can chalk up Josephus' self-contradictory characterizatoin
of the "pri eitz haddar" as a persea, rather than an essrog or citron,
as a translation error on his part or on that of others.
 

R Jonathan Ostroff wrote:
> [1] Larson, E.J. and L. Witham. Leading scientists still reject
> God. Nature. 394(6691): p313, 1998.

> According to [1], in 1998, 60.7% of randomly chosen scientists in
> the USA express disbelief or doubt in the Creator. For *leading*
> scientists (members of the NAS) there is near universal rejection of the
> transcendent, G-d and the immortal soul -- 92% of *leading* scientists
> express either outright disbelief (72.2%) or doubt (20.8%).
>
> This is to be contrasted with the surer opinion of the average American
> who has deep personal beliefs. It seems that 1000 PhDs and members of the
> National Academy of Science can indeed be badly wrong and prejudiced by
> the dogma of methodological naturalism -- regardless of the facts. As
> David Berlinski writes in the latest Commentary: "At some time in the
> history of the universe, there were no human minds, and at some time
> later, there were. Within the blink of a cosmic eye, a universe in which
> all was chaos and void came to include hunches, beliefs, sentiments,
> raw sensations, pains, emotions, wishes, ideas, images, inferences,
> the feel of rubber, Schadenfreude, and the taste of banana ice cream. A
> sense of surprise is surely in order. How did *that* get *here*?"

The subject of Judaism and Science was the topic of a recent
issue of Nitzotzos min haNeir, an e-zine aimed at kiruv workers,
perparing them for topics that are likely to arise. The URL is
<http://www.nerleelef.com/archives.html>, but the site seems to be
severely broken.

I frankly was not overly impressed with this issue, which starts by
asserting how pro-science Yahadus is, and then says there is little
reason to worry about conflicts between Torah and science -- one should
simply wait for science to slowly converge to Torah's understanding. How
pro-science can you be if you dismiss any statement you can't accept as
one that's bound to be revised?

The author mentions an old truism about scientists, that they're scaling
a great cliff, and when they reach the top, they'll find the theologian
already there. He then adds that the scientist would then mistake the
theologian for a continuation of the cliff, and scale him as well --
just to find nothing!

I think this is a significant point. A big problem is simply that when all
you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The scientist works
in a domain of limited scope. He can't consider G-d as an explanation
because of the scope of his territory. However, after doing this long
enough, many scientists then take the absence of G-d in their studies
as a proof of absence, rather than a limitation imposed on the domain
of inquiry in order to play the game.



R Zev Sero wrote:
> Actually, I take the same position'; I also maintain that history and
> science deal with different kinds of "truth"....
...
> The problem is that scientists can get so acclimatised to 'scientific
> truth' as I have defined it above, that they forget there's any other
> kind of truth.

I would make the point I think RZS is trying to, but have phrased it
very differently. History and science deal with the truth of different
domains of inquiry, different sets of question.

I would not say "different kinds of truth" since that would imply that
they could come up with conflicting answers to the same question, and
that would be okay.

This is very related to my campaign against relativism and the creeping
of relativist terminology into our discourse.



BTW, there is also the idea proposed by Kant and Mach (and Einstein
was a great fan of Mach's work) that the order we see in the universe
is because of the nature of our perception rather than there being any
order "out there". In Kantian terms, the phenomenological universe (the
world as it reaches us through our senses) fits the way we think because
we're imposing that order in our perception. The numinal universe (the
world as things-in-themselves) lacks that order. Mach adds that our math
works so well at describing the world, because the same kind of mind that
created the math created the order it describes. E.g. Reiman invented
his non-Euclidean geometry less than a generation before Einstein used
the idea to revolutionize physics, similarly his use of tensors, etc...

If you buy into it, this would say alot about why science succeeds in
giving a natural explanation to the pre-Adam universe, and would give
the same results whether nature applied or not.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             When you come to a place of darkness,
micha@aishdas.org        you don't chase out the darkness with a broom.
http://www.aishdas.org   You light a candle.
Fax: (270) 514-1507        - R' Yekusiel Halberstam of Klausenberg zt"l

Shinnar, Meir wrote:
>WRT to the place of ikkarim, I ran across a citation from the chatam
>sofer where he disputes that the principle of emunah in mashiach should
>be an ikkar - it is in hazal, and therefore we should believe it, but it
>shouldn't be considered an ikkar. I will try to get the precise citation.

Chasam Sofer(Yoreh Deah 2:356): While there is a historic debate
whether there are 13 principles or three I really don't know what
difference this makes except in semantics. Furthermore according to the
kabbalists there is no such thing a foundation principle in the Torah
because every aspect of the Torah is a foundation principle without
distinction one part from another...

Chasam Sofer(Yoreh Deah 2:356): R' Hillel who is quoted in Sanhedrin
(99a) as rejecting salvation through Moshiach but asserted [according to
Rashi] that G-d Himself would directly save the Jews. Rashi is without a
doubt correct that R' Hillel was not rejecting the fact of salvation but
only the agency of Moshiach... Furthermore it is obviously that we don't
accept his view. In fact someone today who asserted that there will be
no Moshiach because he accepts R' Hillel's view is in deny the principle
of the Torah to follow the majority position. Since the overwhelming
majority of sages have rejected this view no one has the right to go
against that majority and insist on accepting the sole dissenting view
of R' Hillel. This is no different that the case of R' Eliezer who
ruled in for his community that it permitted on Shabbos to cut wood to
make charcoal to make iron for a milah knife in order to do bris mila
on Shabbos. Since the majority of Torah scholars rejected this view,
anyone who performs these actions on Shabbos before witness and with a
warning is liable to capital punishment and he can not claim that he is
following the authority of R' Eliezer. This that it teaches in Eduyos
"Why are the minority views taught" is in fact obviously dealing with
a different issue which there is no need to go into here. Nevertheless
even though salvation and the coming of Moshiach are themselves not
foundation principles that determine Judaism but a person who doesn't
accept them is rejecting the foundation principle of belief in the Torah
and the words of the prophets.

Daniel Eidensohn

Shaya Potter <spotter@yucs.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 14:58 -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
>>> At the risk of boring everyone, let me repeat myself. As I see it, the
>>> key insight here is "ve'ein tzayar keilokeinu". G-d is an artist, and
>>> this world is a work of art. What's more, I posit that He is a realist,

> again, this argument is lacking. The only reason this is realistic to us,
> is because it exists. If it didn't exist, it would be just as realistic
> to us.

And if Adam had been created without a navel he would never have known
that people are supposed to have navels, and that he therefore didn't
look authentic, until he saw his kids.

The natural laws of this universe do not allow species to simply appear
ex nihilo - they must evolve slowly from the sort of complex proteins that
can 'accidentally' form nutrient-rich ponds. Therefore, artistic integrity
demands that the evidence such a process would leave behind must be there.

> or to put it bluntly, the world must have been very non realistic to
> people who didnt know about fossils.

Huh?

From: "Yosef Gavriel & Shoshanah M. Bechhofer" <ygb@aishdas.org>
> The entire story purportedly in the name of Reb Chaim is preposterous
> (and I am great fan of Rav Zevin!). I think it is assur to believe that it
> is true. R' Yosef Engel in the Tziyunim la'Torah has a very nice siman
> on what we do with shnei kesuvim ha'machishim zeh es zeh when there
> is no kasuv ha'shelishi le'hachria beinehem - such as Pesachim 68 with
> La'Hashem and Lachem.

...
> I do not think works by RYBS can be classified as machashava, and most
> works by RAYHK are practically unintelligible to the uninitiated.

I would like to comment on two comments of Rabbi Bechhofer - he questioned
Rabbi Zevin's tradition about Rav Chaim and he rejected the teachings of
RYDS as machshova. While I would agree that some of the Rov's teachings
go beyond standard machshova sefarim - but to say across the board that
the writings of arguably the greatest baal machshava of the generations
is not machshava seems a little silly. I assume that RGB has a very narrow
definition of what machshava is. There are many books and articles by the
Rov which are certainly accessible Machshava. Incidentally had RGB looked
in Halakhic Man footnote 5 he would have found the story cited by Rav
Zevin. Al pi shne edim yakum davor - and I guess Rav Chaim didn't think
it was assur to say, nor did Rav Zevin or RYDS think it assur to believe.

Ari Kahn

On Mon, Nov 22, 2004 at 12:52:51PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
: The natural laws of this universe do not allow species to simply appear
: ex nihilo - they must evolve slowly from the sort of complex proteins that
: can 'accidentally' form nutrient-rich ponds. Therefore, artistic integrity
: demands that the evidence such a process would leave behind must be there.

The natural laws are themselves part of the "artwork". Your argument is
circular. Had Hashem desired to create a universe which told its true age,
He could have utilized laws of nature that accomodate that.

(And if Kant and Mach are right, we would impose on nature laws that
accomodate it.)

Second, it only shifts the question from asking why G-d would falsify
history to why G-d felt a need for Realism. You provide a new way of
framing the question, which is often most of the way to the answer,
but you don't provide an actual answer.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             Here is the test to find whether your mission
micha@aishdas.org        on Earth is finished:
http://www.aishdas.org   if you're alive, it isn't.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Richard Bach

Russell Levy <russlevy@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was personally told by a rabbi who sits on the Toronto beis din
> that he will accept geirus of a man (enough to perform an O chasunah)
> performed by certain C rabbis in the city (who have C ordination from
> JTS in the past 20 years). He claimed he was able to because he knew how
> the rabbis live their personal lives....

> He was unable to answer me to give me any sort of clear answer how he
> could he consider these C rabbis be kosher if they talk into a microphone,
> officiate at one, and daven in it, while still use the Rav's view of
> the C movement....

Speaking into a microphone in an of itself may not be a violation of
Hilchos Shabbos. The Halachic principle that allows speaking to someone
on Shabbos who has a hearing aid may be applicable to microphone use. It
is not a simple issue and there may be a version of microphone that is
actually permissible. This is not a Psak. Just an observation.

What is strange is the idea that O rabbi would accept geirus of a man
(enough to perform an O chasunah) performed by certain C rabbis that
live O lifestyles. Knowing how someone lives their personal lives seems
not to be enough. If someone identifies with the C movement, that should
Passul him. Even if the Geirus was done according to the letter of the
law we cannot accept it. This is one of the primary issues that prevent
O rabbis from serving on a combined Geirus board with C and R rabbis.

In fact I believe that Dr. Lamm tried to institute a Geirus board in the
past (in Denver?). His intention was good. He felt that any candidate
that was brought before such a board would then require the approval of
all rabbis on the board and that would mean that only O conversions would
be accepted. Yet it was nixed by virtually all Gedolei Israel IIRC. This
was probably because of long standing opposition to giving any recognition
or legitimacy to non O rabbis by serving together on official boards.

But in the above mentioned case there isn't even an O veto as there
would have been in Dr Lamm's proposed Geirus board. It was completely
a C Geirus. How could anyone who identifies himself as an O rav then
accept such a Geirus?

HM

"Shinnar, Meir" <Meir.Shinnar@rwjuh.edu> wrote:
> It is well known that Rav Moshe Feinstein was vehemently opposed to the
> Conservative movement, and to their rabbis. Furthermore, he ruled that
> weddings done by Conservative rabbishave the hazaka of not being kosher,
> and thus not requiring, at least bdiavad, if not lecatchila, a get.
> However, it has also been documented here that when confronted with
> an individual case where the Conservative rabbi was known to be shomer
> mitzvot, he viewed the wedding as valid, and therefore requiring a get.
> Therefore, at least RMF seemed to hold of the possibility of non trafe
> Conservative rabbis. 

IMHO, in requiring a Get in those situations, RMF was simply Paskening
L'Chumra, as I would expcet any Posek to do in matters of Mamzerus.

HM

On Mon, 2004-11-22 at 10:25 -0800, Harry Maryles wrote:
> Speaking into a microphone in an of itself may not be a violation of
> Hilchos Shabbos. The Halachic principle that allows speaking to someone
> on Shabbos who has a hearing aid may be applicable to microphone use. It
> is not a simple issue and there may be a version of microphone that is
> actually permissible. This is not a Psak. Just an observation.

interesting tidbit, in consecutive tshuvot, Rav Moshe assured microphones,
but permitted hearing aides.

As I understand it, there is an ancient, established Yemenite tradition
regarding which species of locusts are kosher. Since Ashkenazi Jews
don't appear to have any tradition on this subject (as opposed to a
conflicting tradition), could an Ashkenazi rely on the Yemenite mesorah
and start scooping up locusts in Eilat this morning for breakfast?

*nd

On Mon, 2004-11-22 at 12:52 -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
>> or to put it bluntly, the world must have been very non realistic to
>> people who didnt know about fossils.

> Huh?

Did Adam and Chava know about fossils? If not, was the world inauthentic
to them?

Does the lack of knowledge of fossils imply a feeling of "this doesn't
feel authentic".

If not (i.e. it felt authentic), is the reason b/c "if we don't know
better, it feels authentic".

Which would imply, the reason we need fossils is b/c of the level of
knowledge we have about how complicated the world is.

This begs the question, why did god have to go through all the trouble
and create a complicated world that he then has to fill in the "back
story" to make it feel authentic, why not just create a simple world,
where there's no back story needed to fill in?

RabbiRichWolpoe@aol.com wrote:
> Without resorting to Brisker logic <smile> it is pashut that there wer
> multiple Sanhedrins!
...
> {My source is primarily the survey course in Anceint Jewish History
> at BRGS}

I wonder how much orthodox historical thought on this subject was shaped
by Xian apologetics. Their mythos forces them to explain the existance
of a Sanhedrin that condemned someone to (1) death by turning over to
authorities, (2) without eidus, (3) nor hasra'ah, (4) at the kohein
gadol's home, ie outside the lishkas hagazis, (5) at night, (6) in a
vote that was kulo chayav.

Not to mention that we know who the avos beis din were through the entire
period. Neither Hillel's descendents nor R' Yochanan ben Zakkai nor R'
Elazar were kohanim, never mind kohanim gedolim.

In short, the description could never have been of a Pharasaic court,
and was probably written by someone who didn't know halakhah. Since
they met in the kohein gadol's home, a Xian trying to salvage his bible
has strong personal reasons to posit that the Tzeduqim had a 2nd
Sanhedrin simultanously.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             When you come to a place of darkness,
micha@aishdas.org        you don't chase out the darkness with a broom.
http://www.aishdas.org   You light a candle.
Fax: (270) 514-1507        - R' Yekusiel Halberstam of Klausenberg zt"l

At 11:43 AM 11/22/2004, [R Ari Kahn] wrote:
>I would like to comment on two comments of Rabbi Bechhofer - he questioned
>Rabbi Zevin's tradition about Rav Chaim and he rejected the teachings of
>RYDS as machshova. While I would agree that some of the Rov's teachings
>go beyond standard machshova sefarim - but to say across the board that
>the writings of arguably the greatest baal machshava of the generations
>is not machshava seems a little silly. I assume that RGB has a very narrow
>definition of what machshava is. There are many books and articles by the
>Rov which are certainly accessible Machshava. Incidentally had RGB looked
>in Halakhic Man footnote 5 he would have found the story cited by Rav
>Zevin. Al pi shne edim yakum davor - and I guess Rav Chaim didn't think
>it was assur to say, nor did Rav Zevin or RYDS think it assur to believe.

Sorry. as RYBS, great as he may have been, refuses to incorporate Mussar
and only the smallest smidgen of Chassidus and Kabbalah in his writings,
he is inadmissible as a candidate for "the greatest ba'al machashava
of generations." To cite him as such is to misunderstand machashava. I
suggest the writer consult the classic work "Perakim b'Machasheves
Yisrael" by Rabbi Yisraeli and see how often RYBS is cited. V'ha'maskanah
berurah.

As to the ma'aseh with RCS, I stand by my comment. It is slanderous
to assume that RCS did not know that there are countless shnei kesuvim
without a kasuv ha'shelishi which Chazal and Rishonim deal with all the
time. At best one can assume that the story was sichas chullin shel TC.

YGB

In a message dated 10/24/2004 11:05:34am EST, sba@sba2.com writes:
>> Someone asked me on Shabbos why it doesn't say 've'avoreich
>> mevorachecho'?

RabbiRichWolpoe@aol.com wrote:
> im kein Why does it say Lecha Dodi and not Leich Dodi?

I had assumed that RSBA's friend was asking about the assymetry, not
the diqduq. "barukh" (are blessed, without saying by Whom) vs "a'or"
(I will curse). Given that Hashem says who is doing the cursing, why
doesn't He specify who is doing the blessing?

Actually, "a'or" also breaks the symmetry because the root changed from
"meqalelekha", whereas in the first clause, both words are "barukh". HQBH
used lashon sagi nahor, almost literally in this case (nahor vs or).

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             When you come to a place of darkness,
micha@aishdas.org        you don't chase out the darkness with a broom.
http://www.aishdas.org   You light a candle.
Fax: (270) 514-1507        - R' Yekusiel Halberstam of Klausenberg zt"l

Sof dovor hakol nishmah... RYBS was a Brisker. His interest in philosophy
was in existential question of halakhic life. The questions normally
associated with machshavah -- metaphysics, theodicy, theology, etc...
are not frequently addressed by RYBS's explorations. And in fact, in
true Brisker style, were summarily dismissed.

For example, on theodicy, tzadiq vera lo, RYBS dismisses the question
out of hand. In Qol Dodi Dofeiq he tells us that the Jewish reaction to
tragedy is not "Why?" but "How am I to respond?" Theodicial questions
aren't to be asked.

-mi

Shaya Potter <spotter@yucs.org> wrote:
> interesting tidbit, in consecutive tshuvot, Rav Moshe assured microphones,
> but permitted hearing aides.

Yes, I know about those Teshuvos, but have not seen them. Does he
explain the difference? Does it have to do with the volume level?
Also, I remember the subject came under discussion around the time I
received Smicha. I remember some of my fellow Musmachim who went into
Rabbanus telling me that there is a certain kind of microphone that might
be Mutar because of the way it operates (versus the way most others
operated). This discussion took place about 32 years ago. Does anyone
know anything about it?

HM

On Mon, 2004-11-22 at 13:47 -0500, IFriedman@wlrk.com wrote:
> As I understand it, there is an ancient, established Yemenite tradition
> regarding which species of locusts are kosher. Since Ashkenazi Jews
> don't appear to have any tradition on this subject (as opposed to a
> conflicting tradition), could an Ashkenazi rely on the Yemenite mesorah
> and start scooping up locusts in Eilat this morning for breakfast?

I believe we had this discussion a while ago (perhaps in regards to the
Zebu). I think someone brought down that the traditions are transferable
(according to the Rambam?), so it depends on if the yemenites have a
tradition to eat them, while we don't have that tradition (would seem
to imply that it's transferable) as opposed to us having a tradition
NOT to eat them (and hence would be neged the yemenite tradition).

RYGB wrote:
> Sorry. as RYBS, great as he may have been, refuses to incorporate Mussar
> and only the smallest smidgen of Chassidus and Kabbalah in his writings,

Are you referring to Chassidus or Chassidism? (This is a real question,
not sarcasm.) Kabbalah or machshove mekubbeles from the oves oveseine?

ELPh Minden

RAA:
>> That's not "knowing" -- that's "believing".
>> The two are not the same.

R Harry Maryles wrote:
> This sounds like a whole new thread. Is believing the same as knowing
> or not? Is there a difference theologically between knowing and
> believing? If, as you indicate, they are not the same... does that mean
> that a "believer" is less of a Maamin than a "knower". Or is it OK to
> say that one does not know the He exists but believes "B'Emunah Shelaima
> that He does? Is Emunah Shelaimah the same as knowing?

It is a whole new thread, which is why I gave it a new title.

According to R' el Qafeh (a/k/a "Kappach"), the Rambam requires yedi'ah,
not emunah.

RSM, who learned the relevent material in the
original Arabic, discusses this assertion on list. (See
<http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol06/v06n156.shtml#09>). The Rambam lists
"qawaa'id alSharii'a", (RYeQ: yesodei hatorah), and requires that one
hold fully by all the qawaa'id and comprehend them fully.


Some philophical terms:

belief: something a person considers true

knowledge: classically defined as a justified true belief. Some require
that the justification itself be knowledge (recursively), or close
problems with the definition in other ways. Justification could be
a philosophical argument, sensory input, or many other things. What
qualifies as valid justification is itself a huge topic in epistomology.

The two differ in two ways:
1- A belief can be false, but knowledge is definitionally true
2- A true belief that one has without justification is still not
knowledge.

Turning to the Hebrew:

Emunah comes from a shoresh meaning reliable or trustworthy. Emunah
means that someone considers the fact reliable. Says nothing about why.

Yedi'ah seems to be the product of binah and chokhmah-- as in chokhmah
binah vada'as. Closer to Plato's definition of knowledge.

Therefore, any yedi'ah is the subject of emunah, but not necessarily the
reverse. Even emunah sheleimah need not require the kind of justification
that would make it da'as. I could entirely believe and never question
something even though I have no justification for my believing it. For
that matter, someone could r"l have emunah sheleimah in a falsehood.

On a different axis, there is emunah peshutah vs heseg sichli. Consistant
with these terms (and I have only heard the latter from RYBS and
RYBS-derived sources), and sparked by a clever statement made by RSC on
this list, I think it's the difference between knowing G-d the way one
knows a friend, and knowing G-d through philosophically deducing what
He must be like.

Both are necessary as one provides intimacy, the other, detail. One
can't walk bederekh Hashem without both.

-mi

-- 
Micha Berger                 Time flies...
micha@aishdas.org                    ... but you're the pilot.
http://www.aishdas.org                       - R' Zelig Pliskin
Fax: (270) 514-1507

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